<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>New eyes and extra color by Kangoo</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23264086">New eyes and extra color</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo'>Kangoo</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Neko no Ongaeshi | The Cat Returns</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Post-Canon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 06:41:15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,323</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23264086</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangoo/pseuds/Kangoo</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hiromi has known Haru for so long, it's easy to notice all the little ways she's changed lately.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hiromi &amp; Yoshioka Haru</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>New eyes and extra color</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Inspired by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/1168669">Followers of Rivers</a> by acrosticacrumpet. the story is wonderful, go read it! (and i hope it's alright that i took inspiration from it. it it isn't, tell me and i'll take this down)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”</em>
</p><p>― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Haru has changed. Not that much, considering. She just seems… calmer. More sure of herself. More mature. More <em>punctual</em>. But she’s gotten weirder, too, in a way that would be unnoticeable to anyone but Hiromi, her very best friend in the whole world.</p><p>It wouldn’t be so jarring if the change hadn’t occurred basically <em>overnight. </em>As it is, Hiromi finds it so odd, she starts keeping a list of all the weird little things Haru does, starting with <em>not caring that her long time crush has broken up with his girlfriend</em>. </p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Machida isn’t an isolated event. Haru just doesn’t seem to care about boys anymore.</p><p>“I don’t know, I guess they don’t seem that interesting anymore, compared to...” She drifts off. “Anyway, I think I’m a little young to be in a relationship.”</p><p>“It’s not like you’re going to marry any of them- wait, compared to <em>who</em>?” Haru doesn’t reply, but her blush gives her away. Did you get into romance novels?”</p><p>She giggles. “Something like that, I guess.”</p><p>Well, if her new romantic ideal is a prince or a gentleman saving her from danger, it’s true that she doesn’t have much to hope for in teenage boys.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>She stops when she meets a cat. She’s always found them cute, and of course she did throw herself into traffic to save a cat last week. Even Hiromi stops to pet friendly cats sometimes. But Haru does it constantly, even when they’re late, greeting them politely as if they’re acquaintances or neighbors. She bows to the few cats who won’t let her approach. She asks the strays if they need anything.</p><p>They don’t tell each other <em>everything</em>, but surely she’d have noticed if Haru had been that much of a cat person before.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>She buys food for the strays around the neighborhood. Sometimes, when she finds particularly young or sick strays, she buys fish-shaped cookies for them. It’s a lot of money to waste on a cat that’s not even her own, but when Hiromi voices that opinion she simply replies,</p><p>“That money doesn’t mean a lot to me, but you never know how much a good meal means for them.”</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>It’s not just cats, though. She keeps nuts and dried berries for when they find crows, and thanks each and every one of them when they come to eat her offerings. Hiromi can never tell what she thanks them for.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>When they go out for sushi, Haru stares at the chef cutting a whole fish behind the counter and looks… thoughtful for a second. When asked about it, she says,</p><p>“I forget we eat raw fish, sometimes.”</p><p>It doesn’t make any sense — who forgets sushi is made of raw fish? — but she still eats plenty of it, so it can’t be that important.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Jelly, on the other hand, she refuses to touch. It’s not as if they eat it often, but her faint look of queasiness whenever they encounter any in a shop’s window or an ad is enough to be of note.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>When she doesn’t want something, she doesn’t pretend otherwise. She refuses, politely but clearly, and doesn’t leave any doubt whatsoever.</p><p>She says it’s easier than dealing with the consequences of people misunderstanding her hesitance as tacit agreement. Hiromi wonders what kind of consequences she faced in the past.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>When Hiromi aces the test she spent weeks studying for, Haru brings chiffon cake with homemade whipped cream to celebrate.</p><p>“It’s good,” Hiromi says around a mouthful, surprised. “I didn’t know you could bake.”</p><p>Haru licks cream off her fingers and says, conspiratory, “I got the recipe from a friend.”</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>She gets really into miniatures. Hiromi has an aunt who collects them and makes incredibly detailed dollhouses with them, so she knows a few shops who sell them from past gift-buying efforts.</p><p>“I just think they’re cute,” Haru tells her after buying a collection of small tea tins with colorful patterns painstakingly painted on them.</p><p>Hiromi never sees any of them when she comes to her house. She doesn’t ask what Haru does with them — maybe she gifts them to a relative as well.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Sometimes she looks at sculptures and says, “Someone put a lot of heart into this one.”</p><p>She’s right, most of the time. They’re not always the most perfect or beautiful works of art there is, but they’re always painfully earnest and very well loved — you can tell if you truly look at them. There’s a sense of lifelike energy in them that’s lacking in less passionate works.</p><p>Hiromi never knew her to have an eye for art, but maybe she never found the kind of art that speaks to her before now.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>When they go to the park, Haru always takes a moment to sprawl in the grass. She always look a bit disappointed for a second, like she expects it to feel softer and nicer than it actually does.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>When she doesn’t know how to get out of a bad situation — when she realizes she forgot to study for today’s test or when the school’s bullies turn their attention to her for a moment — she doesn’t panic. Instead she sits down calmly, and she waits. </p><p>“Things are never as hopeless as they seem,” she says. “Sometimes, they get better on their own.”</p><p>Sometimes, they do. If not, she gets back up, and she does her best to fix things herself.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>She runs up stairs like there’s a prize waiting for her at the top. At least it’s good cardio for Hiromi when she has to catch up with her.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>When a ball or a frisbee gets stuck in a tree, she’s the first one to climb up walls and nearby roofs to get to it. </p><p>“Couldn’t you just take a ladder?” </p><p>“Where’s the fun in that when there’s always another way up?”</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Hiromi is afraid of heights. Haru, when she tries to help, tells her to look down.</p><p>“It’ll be alright,” she says, “Just look down. You’ll be fine.”</p><p>It’s still terrifying, but she knows Haru would never let her fall, so it’s easier.</p><p> </p><p>-</p><p> </p><p>Sometimes, Hiromi meets her at the Crossroad and finds her sitting next to an enormous white cat. In light of recent development (read: her sudden transformation into a cat lady), it’s not that out of character. But she <em>talks</em> to it. That’s the weird part. </p><p>Once or twice Hiromi got close enough to listen to what she was saying, and just stood there, increasingly dumbfounded as Haru told this cat about her day. It’s always sleeping, or it seems to be, but its eyes are perked up, like it’s listening to her. Then it gets up, jumps off the chair it was sleeping on, and waits patiently for her to rummage through her bag and takes out a small box. It’s definitely from the bakery down the street, the one they go to for special occasions because it’s not <em>posh</em> but it’s definitely not cheap either. And she gives that box to the <em>cat</em>.</p><p>“Tell Baron and Toto I said hi, hm?”</p><p>The looks it gives her is downright unimpressed, but maybe it’s just what its face looks like. Then it takes the decorative bow in its mouth and takes off, surprisingly quickly for such a fat cat.</p><p>Hiromi walks up to Haru and greets her as if she hasn’t seen anything out of the ordinary, mostly because she’s not sure any of it really happened. Maybe she’s the one going mad. She just says,</p><p>“Was that your cat?”</p><p>“No, he’s just a friend.”</p><p>That clears up absolutely nothing. At this point, she doesn’t know why she asks.</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>as a side note: i think chihiro and haru would and should be friends. "young girls who got kidnapped into another world, almost had to stay there forever because of a curse, and were saved partly by their own fortitude and partly thanks to the help of a charming stranger who belongs to this other world" solidarity</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>